On "Morning Joe."

Have our standards sunk so low as to have Mike Barnicle as our arbiter of ethics and "taste?"

Mike Barnicle was reprimanded for fabricating a story about children with cancer. And, in a separate instance, he plagiarized jokes from one of George Carlin's books.

Yet, one of the biggest companies in the world still has him on speaking for "the blue-collar man."

And I remember him, I think it was in 2004, going on-air, on MSNBC, to do his best to humiliate the members of a Frank Luntz (deserving, himself, of a separate post) focus-group by comparing its members to "the bar scene in Star Wars." That was in criticism of their physical appearance.

Does that s.o.b. think he's "hot?"

And the group, Olbermann included, if I recall correctly, chuckled in quite the unison.

While I congratulate MSNBC for providing a platform for voices like Olbermann and Maddow, I must question their ethics, when they pay what is at least a six-figure salary to this person to comment of the ethics or morality of anyone.

Barnicle, despite his manufactured image of a blue-collar amigo, is the epitome of the coziness that we must expunge from the national press corps. He is a blight and a scourge.

And he, and those like him, must be obliterated from the national scene. The sooner the better.